Sunday, February 5, 2012

This week is an odd confluence of world events in World of Warcraft. We are currently midway through the Lunar New Year event, which is set by the Chinese calendar and therefore does not always fall in the same window in the US. WoW's Valentine's event has been expanded out to two full weeks to accommodate a lengthier token grind - albeit a big improvement from the original iteration of the event, which was both short and purely random number generator dependent. On top of that, the newly revised Darkmoon Faire carnival is up and running for the first full week of the month.

I actually am in game working on various projects during this busy stretch. I just completed the token tour for the new lantern minipet, during which I dug up a bunch of Archeology sites. Charm bracelets for the Valentine's event, and its new pink ostrich-ish mount, are earned through normal killing of mobs. Effectively, these events are holding my attention because they offer additional rewards for stuff I was planning to do anyway. The other side of the coin, however, is that I tend NOT to work on WoW when there is NOT an event going. I suppose I'm holding out for a little more in exchange for my time in WoW, in the same way that I hold out for a little bit more in exchange for my money in non-subscription titles?

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About Player Versus Developer

I'm what they call a "WoW Tourist" - WoW was my first MMO, and being able to set my own schedule is a dealbreaker. At any given time, I can be found ducking in and out of half a dozen different MMO's.

This blog details some of my own personal exploits, but it also focuses on a meta-gaming issue that I find very interesting - the decisions developers make on how to reward player activity, and the decisions players make in response to maximize their own rewards.